Rea to give State of City Tuesday

But mayor won't read all 133 pages in his report.

But mayor won't read all 133 pages in his report.

February 16, 2006|SUE LOWE Tribune Staff Writer

MISHAWAKA -- One of the items in Mayor Jeff Rea's office is a copy of the 1914 State of the City speech by Mayor Ralph Gaylor. It's a bound book, carefully preserved. There's a quote in it about natural gas prices going so high that "people are quite concerned." Rea may quote from that speech and one given in 1928 by Mayor Walter Michael when he gives his 2006 State of the City speech at the Common Council meeting Tuesday. There are 133 pages in Rea's speech. But, he said, he's not going to read the whole thing, just an "executive summary." "More than anything," Rea said of the entire speech, "it's the historical record. It's a document somebody picks up 50 years from now and knows what was going on." The tradition of long Mishawaka State of the City speeches had died out by the time Robert C. Beutter, Rea's predecessor, took over that office in 1984. He gave his State of the City speeches, usually a few pages long, at a meeting of the first service club that invited him to speak after the first of the year. Then, members of a predominantly Democratic Common Council became offended and passed an ordinance requiring that he unveil it at a second council meeting in February. "I started making it quite a production," he admits. The document became a record of just about everything that had happened in the previous year, along with some plans for the future. And, unlike Rea, Beutter read the whole document. It usually took about an hour and forty-five minutes. One similarity between the Beutter and Rea administrations is their department heads spend a lot of time getting their annual reports together in January and early February. The mayors use those reports to create the State of the City speech, or report. "The problem is, we did too much last year," City Planner Ken Prince was heard muttering this year. It took Rea a long weekend and a long Monday to finish his speech, and he took it to the printer Tuesday. Staff writer Sue Lowe: slowe@sbtinfo.com (574) 235-6557